Wasted Years Read Online Free Page B

in her smart little gray suit with its high collar and tapered skirt she wasn’t above sliding up her skinny legs whenever the area manager happened to pop in. Three years of elocution lessons and a polytechnic degree in Modern Languages and they’d made her acting branch manager about as soon as she’d finished her training. Two years older than Lorna, nothing more.
    “It’s still confidential, of course, but Mr Spindler says I’ll be moving on to one of the main branches within the year.”
    She’d heard her one day, telling Marjorie as if she was doing her a big favor, letting her in on a secret, and Marjorie, all soggy-eyed, “Oh, Becca! How lovely!”
    Never mind the way Spindler treated Marjorie herself, patronizing bastard, “Well, Marjorie, keeping these two youngsters in order, are we?” Seventeen years she’d worked there, Marjorie, passed over every chance of promotion there was, all the while pretending that it hadn’t happened.
    Not me, Lorna thought, that’s not what’s going to happen to me. Eighteen months tops and I’m putting in for a transfer and if I don’t get it I’m straight off to the Halifax, the Abbey National, the Leeds. And I don’t care who knows it.
    Twenty-three minutes past two. There—I looked.
    Oh, well.
    Lorna eased her back against the padded chair and turned the pages of last week’s Bella, which was resting on her knees. In the raised area behind her, she could hear Becca and Marjorie at their desks: Becca going on about her holiday in Orlando; Marjorie retelling the story of her sister’s ovarian cyst, the size of a small baby—Sunday mornings going round car-boot sales for a shawl and a second-hand cot before she realized the truth.
    The door opened slowly and Lorna’s eyes flicked back towards the clock. Twenty-five past. Old Mr Foreman in his carpet slippers and his zip not properly fastened, paying in fifteen pounds and withdrawing five—“Did you see such-and-such last night? Bloody tripe! Don’t know why those people get paid.”
    She closed her magazine and slid it beneath the ledger.
    Darren stood just inside the door, Keith behind him. Already he could feel his heart pumping. Three women, one at the front, behind the only cashier’s window in use, the others farther back, neither of them looking round, paying any attention. The girl at the window, though, round glasses, staring at him through big round glasses, surprised. Well, he’d give her something to be surprised about.
    “The door,” he said to Keith, moving forward.
    “Uh?”
    “Watch the door.”
    Lorna sat readying her smile, a new customer, probably nothing more than an inquiry, how d’you go about opening an account?
    “Lorna Solomon?” smiled Darren, reading her name off the engraved plate at the side of the window.
    He wasn’t bad-looking when he smiled.
    “Yes,” she said. “How may I help you?”
    Darren laughed, more of a chuckle than a laugh. He opened the front of the loose leather jacket he was wearing and pulled out a bin bag, black. “Here,” he said, passing it through to her. “Fill that.’
    Behind the blue-framed glasses, Lorna blinked. It had to be a joke, a wind-up, someone kidding her for a bet, a dare.
    “Do it,” Darren said. “Don’t make no fuss. Do it now, eh?”
    It wasn’t a dare.
    Lorna’s gaze shifted towards the second youth, far shorter, over by the door. Neither of them older than she was herself.
    “Don’t keep me waiting,” Darren said, his voice a little louder.
    “Miss Solomon,” came Becca’s toffee-nosed voice from behind. “Is something the matter?”
    “This gentleman has a query, Miss Astley,” Lorna said, turning her head. “Perhaps you should deal with it yourself.”
    “What the fuck’re you playing at?” said Darren, face thrust close against the screen.
    “What’s going on?” said Keith, stepping away from the door.
    Trim legs on the short flight of steps, Becca saw the plastic bag in Lorna’s hand, read,